Identity - Lesson 9

Dr. James Houston

Identity

th731-09

Shaping the Christian Identity in 2nd Century AD

Lesson Transcript

Our fourth lecture now we entitle shaping the identities of the Christian and of Christianity in 2nd century AD. Although there were a few high ranking families early converted in Rome in the 40s, evident in the Roman names listed in chapter 16 of the Epistle, the majority are Greek names that were largely imported Eastern slaves. Possibly then, two-thirds of the Christian population in Rome were slaves. They were educated. And the rest were mostly Jewish merchants and traders.

Peter Lampe has traced the areas of Rome where these differing groups were located. In the swampy, coastal area of Trastevere, near the port of Puteoli, lived the harbour workers and other labourers, probably housing the great majority of the Christians. Since this was outside the city, in Nero’s fire of 64 AD, when he deliberately fired a large section of the inner city, these poor homes escaped the conflagration, which is probably why the Christians living there were blamed as the arsonists. Tacitus narrates that the executed Christians were a tremendous crowd who were wrapped in the skins of wild animals and mangled by dogs or nailed to crosses and burned for nocturnal illumination. These executions were outside of Roman penal law suggesting they were not considered Roman citizens, as slaves were certainly not; whereas, Jews were, suggesting that few of the Early Christians were Jews in Rome. That was to come later. Rather, these were emancipated slaves, suggesting the advanced education, like the Greek, who is described in Lewis’ Till We Have Faces. Thus, non-Roman poor Christians were more readily accused of the odium: they hate the human race, that is to say, civilised Roman citizens, by their practices of presumed cannibalism and other expressions, are being counter-cultural.

There followed new vicarious acts of Christian sacrifice. 1 Clement 55 cites freeborn citizens selling themselves as slaves in order to raise church funds, or to give the proceeds to feed poor, hungry Christians. Can you imagine doing that today? This reveals how Early Christian solidarity took shape as all being one in the body of Christ and of his sacrifice. Writing in the 90s, Clement admonishes. He says the strong one should care for the weak. The weak one should esteem the strong one. The wealthy one should aid the poor. But the poor should thank God for giving the rich the means through which the poor could be helped in his need. The wise ought not to show his wisdom in words, but in good works: 1 Clement 38:2.

As we find ourselves, the more we grow in Christ, the more complex our penetration of our society becomes, for living in the ghetto is introverting our faith, which is truly to be directed to all the world. This tension was also developed in Early Christianity after the name ‘Christian’ was first adopted in the metropolis of Antioch, far removed from Galilean peasantry. But even in Jerusalem, there had been momentous change with the destruction of the temple and hence the abolition of sacrifice. This was a huge transformation for Judaism, for now entering synagogue worship, whose effects change pagan worship, that later abolished animal sacrifice in the 2nd century. An interesting Jewish scholar, [inaudible 00:05:16], has indicated what a radical change took place in Judaism and it later was, of course, to expose to ridicule the continual animal sacrifice of the pagan world, so that too changed. For the Roman philosophers too had to teach much more ethically as the Stoics and the Epicureans led in this new form of worship as the moral way.

We also see in this period a new role of apostolic memory. Without ritualistic religion both in the [Jewish, or Christian and pagan religions 00:06:03], memory and teaching began to play a new critical role. We all experience that the more public influence a leader has, the longer his or her memory is sustained. Mortality in this period averaged 30–35 years, with perhaps only 5% living to the age of 60 or older. So the last witnesses of the apostolic generation would live to about 140 AD, when oracular tradition would then give way to a more epistolary succession. Polycarp, who became a martyr, is a key witness for he had lived long enough to associate with the Apostles. He was a child when he knew the Apostle John and the impact on the child of the presence of the Apostle was a memory that transformed him for the rest of his life. A cotemporary of Polycarp, Quadratus, testifies in his apology to still knowing a few who had actually been healed by Jesus, that the witnesses of what Jesus had done to them were still living at that time. In the earliest oral tradition we have a fragment called Traditions of the Elders, which referred to John’s Book of the Revelation as being among those who were discipled by the Apostles, saying some of them saw not only John, but other Apostles as well and heard this account from them and so testify. Jesus himself had instituted the Lord’s Supper as the Eucharistic meal as central to salvation and adding the words do this in memory of me. And the later epistle 2 Peter seeks to keep alive this oracular tradition of eyewitnesses to his life. So the personalities of the early apologists reflect their own messages as distinctive to their own memory of Jesus or of the Apostles.

Papias of Hierapolis, who lived between 60 and 130 AD, remains a shadowy figure, but whose memory of the disciples and his connection with sources used by Mark and Matthew we’ve already mentioned in a previous address. Papias wrote five books, Exposition of the Sayings of Jesus, in which he appears middy critical of the written sources of the Gospels over against his own living or oral apostolic tradition, for he had received the faith directly from those who had known Jesus personally, not just writing about him. He used to say about Mark’s Gospel: Mark, having become Peter’s interpreter, wrote down accurately all he remembered though not in order of the things said or done by Christ. For he neither heard the Lord nor followed him, but, as I said, followed Peter, who adapted his teaching as needed but had no intention of giving an ordered account of the Lord’s sayings. Eusebius, who records this, adds that Papias adds I did not suppose that information from books would help me so much as that which comes from a living and a surviving voice.

Ignatius of Antioch, who lived between 70 and 107, came from the first church, as recorded in the Acts of the Apostles 11:26, to name believers Christians. He is also the first to use the name ‘Ecclesia’ for the community of Christians, distinguishing the Ephesians as Christ bearers from the Philippians as Christ learners and the Romans as Christ governed. Seeking martyrdom, he wants not only to be named a Christian, but to become a Christian through death. You know, we forget in our generation that if we’re daily dying unto the Lord Jesus, it’s no big deal to be martyred at the end of it all. But we’ve forgotten that. Again, we know little about Ignatius expect for his remarkable letter to the Roman Christians in which he begs them not to interfere with his martyrdom under Trajan at the beginning of the 2nd century. I fear that your love for me, that it will damage me, he says, for I do not want you to please humans. If you remain silent concerning me, I shall be a Word of God for I die happily for God if only you will not hinder it. Do not speak of Jesus Christ and still long to remain in this world. I desire, he says, no longer to live according to human fashion. And it will happen if you desire it.

In contrast to the calm spirit of Polycarp, Ignatius is a strong, blustering spirit of which heroes are made. Obviously, Ignatius fears that socially high-ranking Christians have connections with the imperial palace that could get him freed from the death sentence. He doesn’t appeal to them. For even the concubine of the [Emperor Nero 00:12:41] had already freed four slaves in the mines of Sardinia because of her seduction. Or it could have been the freedom of Claudius Ephebus, who brought Clement to Rome originally. For Pliny is already aware that in Asia Minor Christians were now coming from all classes of society, even from within the imperial palace.

The third great witness is Polycarp of Smyrna. We don’t know exactly when he was born, somewhere between 74–89, and he died somewhere between 155–160. He lived just 35 miles north of Ephesus, venerated as a companion of the Apostles and thus considered an apostolic man. He taught in harmony with the scriptures as having received them from the eyewitnesses of the Word of Life. Eusebius recounts how Polycarp says a childhood memory of the Apostles remains throughout one’s life: what he looked like; what he said. Converted as a child, he was not subverted by the later Classical education. Rather, his voice was one of authority as having been taught so intimately by the Apostles themselves. And he reminds us of the testimony in John’s Gospel as written by the disciple whom Jesus loved. No wonder then he hated the false witnesses of his day, like the Marcionites, calling Marcion to his face an arch-heretic, the firstborn of Satan, while his own epistle to the Philippians reflects his own life of joy in the Incarnation of Christ as expressed in his hymnody. His mission then was to encourage Christians to live humbly like Christ himself, to discourage wealthy Christians from living like their Gentile peers. He writes primarily to non-educated Christians. Polycarp’s person is calm and steadfast, not threatened by either status, nor even martyrdom.

A fourth great hero of the period is Ireneaus of Lyons, who was born between 140–160, we don’t quite know when—the middle of the century—and who died about the year 200. He too had sustained memory of the Apostles, but now indirectly by being associated and hearing Polycarp as a young man for a long period of time. As he said, he made notes of Polycarp’s teaching, not on paper, but in my heart. He reports that Polycarp himself used to remember the words of the Apostles and, having received this from the eyewitnesses of the Word of Life, he used to relate all things in harmony with the scriptures. Brought up in Asia Minor, Ireneaus migrated with many others along the new Roman road system into Gaul to settle in the new military and commercial centre of Lyons. Later, about 189, he was to begin electing a bishop. Two of his works survived: Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching and his major work, which he wrote about 180, called Against Heresies.

Now was the time—and this is our next theme—of the spread of these heresies. It’s directed against mainly the Valentinian Gnostics. And we can ask what is Gnosticism? Gnosticism is stored knowledge that’s not acted upon. It’s what would make every business today bankrupt as it happened to Eastman over his film that he stored that knowledge and he committed suicide. As a result, he made suicide of the company as well. So one of the ironies of our seminaries is that they’re Gnostic: they store knowledge. And our young people today in their small house churches are acting on what they heard on Sunday by giving to the poor or the homeless during the week. That is exercised knowledge and that’s what Gnosticism is all about: the storing of knowledge. It seemed innocent when it started, but it is in fact a contradiction of the Gospel. Something to think about in seminary education today.

And so Ireneaus demolishes all Valentinian speculations of a superordinate pleroma beyond the creator god and all the speculations that theology so often outlines. Now that the canon of scripture is firmly in place for his teaching, he creates criteria for truth in doctrine as foundational for later periods. He establishes a Christological truth of the two natures of Christ and his theology of the Incarnation of the descent of God for the sake of the ascent of man. The Son of God became the son of man that through him we may receive adoption. It is then from Irenaeus that we learn about all sorts of heretics that began to appear in the 2nd century. Already, early on, he identified a new prophetic movement springing up in Asia Minor and Phrygia led by Montinus, which spread to Rome. There was Cerdo, also going to Rome about 136–142, isolating himself also in [schism 00:19:53]. Marcion, who was a merchant from Alexandria, succeeded him with his speculations. Valentinus also came to Rome. And again, like others, all claimed to be reformers of the Church.

Carpocrates was yet another false teacher, claiming the world was created by angels, greatly inferior to the unbegotten father and that Jesus was merely the human son of Joseph. In other words, we’re no further forward today with the Jehovah’s Witnesses or the Mormons than these heresies of the 2nd century. All this indicates there was clearly no organised structure of orthodox churches with educated presbyters to lead them. Bishops with papal authority were to come much later. After hearing about yet another Marcionite called Florinus in a letter preserved by Eusebius, Ireneaus writes O good God, to what a time you’ve preserved me that I should endure such things. In other words, Ireneaus was in a flood of heretical teachings. These heretics tended to arise from would-be reformers with creative imagination, a weak Biblical understanding and strongly divisive egos. All of us can be foolish in saying a wrong thing. It’s when we become dogmatic to defend what we’ve said wrongly that is the beginning of a heresy. Humility—I was wrong; I made a mistake—is that which is the purge for truth.

Of course, the diverse social stratification and diverse ethnic origins combined with a majority being Greek emancipated slaves from Asia Minor were all an environment for this kind of heretical development. There was, however, another reason and that was the slow acceptance of the canon of the 27 books of the New Testament, which took several centuries to receive broad acceptance. The test was the authenticity of Christ’s own teaching. So pseudo-gospels and letters were commonly claimed as being his teaching. Memory of the Apostles, which had been a key early defence of what actually was from Christ’s own teaching now became abused, making the next generation much more vulnerable to confusion. Since the 27 books were themselves a variety of genres, some were earlier recognised than others, but all required in-depth careful study of each textual genre, which the Alexandrine school was later to develop at the beginning of the 3rd century.

But the clutter of apocryphal texts was further complicated by being adopted differently within diverse ethnic regions such as Egypt with the Coptic community that was remote from all the other Christian communities of Rome and Asia Minor or in Gaul. The Gnostic communities prized greatly the apocryphal as a differing mindset from that of the Orthodox Church, which repudiated it all as false. Since these apocryphal documents go back as early or earlier than the fourth Gospel their antiquity was revered over that of the Gospels. Making it all more complex, there was piety in both camps. Poorly educated Christians can be very pious, as we have today, but their piety is not enough. We have to use our minds as well as our piety for Christ. And so scholars armed with computer skills today are now re-entering this whole field of apocryphal materials from vast new resources that were excavated in small fragments buried in the Egyptian desert sands as well as with renewed contacts with the persecuted Coptic, Syrian and Armenia churches of the Middle East today.

We mentioned about Marcion. He was a wealthy ship owner plying between Alexandria and Rome, who bought influence, rank and tutors to become a Donald Trump of pseudo-Christianity. He taught demiurge theology, still ironically trusting in the astrology of the stars. While he taught they were created by the evil demiurge, yet he relied on them for his navigation skills and his commercial success. He is reckoned to have surpassed all other heretics as a menace to the Christians, as we see how Polycarp reacted to him. He had no pagan philosophy to defend him, only a barricade of Biblical texts used mythologically to wander through his pseudo-knowledge.

We mentioned Valentinus, who again was a Gnostic who came from Alexandria to Rome in 140, where he turned from orthodoxy to found a new school of his own writing all sorts of homilies and psalms and letters teaching that the divine pleroma is divided into 30 aeons formed in pairs. The final aeon, Sophia, commits sin by desiring excessively to know the eternally unknown father. But others were taught by philosophical speculators who saw the Old Testament as being deficient of its morality. In other words, the deficiency of the morality of the Old Testament, which is still hanging onto us today, is simply because never were there enough Christians to understand the Hebrew text. When I was doing a volume with our beloved brother Bruce Waltke on Psalms of praise and worship, I counted up that until the 19th century, there were scarcely ten leaders of the Church since the days of the Vulgate in the 5th century that understood Hebrew. And that’s why the Vulgate became the closed book that the New Testament became and it’s never been able to help us to understand the context of Old Testament morality compared with what we think the New Testament gives to us. So these are some of the heresies that linger on in our midst today.

One of the pop literature of the period for uneducated Christians is called The Shepherd of Hermas, which was circulated in the 90s, mixing erotica with a rather distorted Christianity. And of course, it would be hugely popular, as it would be today, but it was never canonised by the Christian leaders. The epistle of Barnabas has no explicit audience, but as the Apostle Barnabas was traditionally identified with Egypt, the title was appropriate for its intended audience and so the Coptic Church, of course, has adopted that very seriously. Likewise, the preaching of Peter was another appropriate pseudonym of the early 2nd century work. Both condemned Jewish practices in Alexandria, but the former stressed that the covenant should be claimed as belonging only to the Christians. Barnabas claimed this to be a paschal 00:29:13] homily dissuading Christians not to mix with the large population in the city, but he had nothing to say about the surrounding pagan culture. Again, it illustrates how much dissension and fragmentation there was in the diverse Christian communities that shaped the 2nd century. You wonder how in the world Christianity ever survived that century.

How did it survive? I want now to emphasise that there was a remarkable demographic growth of Christianity in the 2nd century. It didn’t come with public evangelism, as later periods of the Church have exercised. It came much more personally. Why was it that Christian converts grew so rapidly in spite of the strong persecutions? As we’ve said, from the list of 15 women notables recognised by Paul in Romans 16, that suggests a very significant proportion of women that were Christian leaders were ruling over the house churches in Rome. Some we know were married to pagan husbands of great public influence, so the children would grow up nurtured in faith by their mothers not their fathers. A recent sociological study has shown evidence that this rapid expansion was a result of the epidemics of disease that face the great cities of the 2nd century.

A million in congested slums in a city like Rome was ripe for epidemics. And in 273, a catastrophic epidemic wiped out a third or more of the urban population. In panic, the pagans fled into the countryside to desert their sick and dying family members at home. Even the notable physician Galen, who was himself, as a Stoic, a virtuous man, is known to have fled. But a much, much higher number of Christians survived because at the risk of their own lives they stayed sacrificially to nurse their sick relatives so the mortality of the Christians was much, much less. If we also bear in mind, just as this crazy [inaudible 00:32:18] demographic of China today where one child is allowed for one family. That means a huge abolition of the reproductive source of women. So by the year 2040, China will no longer be reproductively producing. It’ll be one alive to 1.1 for the future. The whole demographic of China will collapse.

Now, the same thing happened in the 2nd century because it was common practice to have a son and not a daughter. Women were non-citizens. They were non-persons under Roman law. And so the result was they were shooting themselves in the foot.

Well, it was the result then of these two things that meant that by the beginning of the 5th century, Constantine, whether he ever became a Christian or not, we don’t know, but politically he was beaten. He was beaten by demographics. There were far more Christians than pagans when he came to the throne. In other words, 1 Corinthians 13 reminds us that it’s love that prevails. And it was love that generated then compassion, as in the compassion of Christ, the remarkable demographics of the Christian population of the later Roman Empire.

Before we close, we also want now to look at another aspect and that was the rise of the concept of Christianity. Justin Martyr, who lived between about 100 and 165, was the Roman son of an official governing in the province of Judah after the Bar Kokhba revolt. He grew up in Flavia Neapolis, a new Roman city, near the site of Schecham and now the near city of Ariel that’s built near its ruins to become the capital of the West Bank settlements today. In other words, Schecham was where Joshua and Gideon dwelt and so the shrine of Gideon is just outside the site of the new centre of Ariel today. And it was, of course, in the period of the settlement of the land this vision that God has for establishing His people in a new territory. How interesting are the symbolics of that site. Well, Justin grew up there. And before 135, we know he had become converted to become a Christian. And in his Dialogue with Trypho, who was a Jewish refugee from Kokhba, Justin shares his narrative of his intellectual quest for God.

He did so, first of all, seeking philosophical truth. He was tutored by a Stoic philosopher, but he decided nothing was coming to me about God from his teaching. So then he moved onto a peripatetic tutor following Aristotle, but when a fee was demanded of him, he shrewdly [inaudible 00:37:00] off from his as well. Next stop were the Pythagoreans, who enlarged his education with music and astronomy and geometry, but, again, weren’t showing him a way of life. And finally, he found a wise man prominent among the Platonists and within a very short time I thought I’d become wise too he tells us. But meanwhile, he had become familiar with the Greek Septuagint version of the Old Testament and began to dialogue with the Jew Trypho.

Oskar Skarsaune, who’s written a wonderful book about him called The Proof from Prophecy, argues that Trypho had begun to hear the voice of Jewish Christians echoing Matthew’s Gospel in the distressing years after the Bar Kokhba revolt. Likely he received the Gospel from Gentile Christians living in Jerusalem, working with a harmony of the Synoptic Gospels to read the sayings of Jesus.

Next, we find Justin in Rome, finding likely his fellowship with Gentile Christians and making his living as a teacher or presbyter in one of the house churches. About 153, he took the case of a Christian wealthy women to court, claiming the return of her dowry from her dissolute husband. Justin is now using the legal opportunity to write out a legal petition 15 times longer than the normal one to present to the court. In other words, he’s acting as a diligent Christian lawyer. And this time his court case is the apology as to who the Christians were and he based this on the Logos of John 1, arguing that, as such, the Revelation is for all mankind. Since Logos was a key word for the Stoics, Justin was trying to build bridges with the cultured Roman citizens. He was inventing a new genre called the apology. He’s acting as a Christian lawyer, respected in the law courts for his skills.

And the next decade were very productive years until about 165 he was arrested with six of his pupils at his school situated above the bars of Juan Martinez. The urban prefects, the judge Rusticus and the trial ask who made you all Christians? They all replied, to protect their teacher, our parents taught us. But all were led off to be executed. Justin’s Apologia had generated a new defence of enormous significance for the growing Church because he was now giving recognition to the legal status of the Christians, such was the beginning of Christianity.

So we come next to Athenagoras. Within 15 years after Justin’s death, in place of Justin’s letter, which ordinary folk could use to approach the emperor through the court, guilds or cities, could send a personal delegate. Now Athenagoras uses his bolder strategy in his Legatio Pro Christianis, in other words, the legality of the Christian status. He’s addressing the Emperor Marcus Aurelius and his son Commodus directly in 176–80 to combat the three popular charges of the Christians: of atheism, of incest and cannibalism. The genre now created sought to win the emperor’s favour as a Stoic idealist by congratulating him for Pax Romana, for his justice over the diverse ethnicity of his subjects. He emphasises that monotheism is not polytheism and it’s certainly not atheism. Once its philosophical reasonableness could be postulated then, as educated pagan who themselves no longer offered animal sacrifices, could they not see that educated ethical Christians should be treated with due respect, that they were the best citizens of the society? His later treatise on the resurrection proceeded to argue that Christians believe the creation of the human being is to integrate body and soul, both in this life and in the life to come.

Melito, who became Bishop of Sardis, he also appealed to Marcus Aurelius about 161, as recorded by Eusebius, but only fragments of a Paschal sermon have been preserved of his work. And then we have Tertullian about 160–240. As a Carthaginian outside the pale of Rome in North Africa, he sees that Romanitas and Christianity have become irreconcilable. Probably as a lay elder, for he identifies himself with the laity in exhortation to chastity, he has a brilliant mind and writes voluminously. And although he identified himself with a new sect of Montanism that emphasised prophecy, there’s no evidence that he ever left the mainstream of Christian faith. He tells us he was brought up a pagan, married, committed adultery then as an adult converted by the witness of Christian martyrs. So he is now speaking with great new boldness. Some 31 works of his survive. They’re all polemical, for he was much influenced by Stoicism and remained a vocal disciplinarian. He writes apologetically against paganism. He writes against Jews and heretics. He writes morally as a stern disciplinarian. He explores then many themes of daily life.

In the midst of all this, you see therefore extremities. And so we come finally to the exegetical life of mature Christians. And one of these is now Clement of Alexandria, who lived 150–216. He’s a new voice, not familial like Athenagoras speaking for us as those called Christians, but for those who are maturing in the life called Christians. He writes as an educationalist, seeing that Christians are the children of God that need tutelage like that of a Greek paideia, first by exhortation, then by baptism and finally in maturity with the master to become godly and ever growing in the love of God.

And of course, we mention many times Origen and we close with him, living between 185 and 250. Eusebius says of Origen that his manner of life was as his doctrine. His doctrine was as his life. Therefore, he aroused a great many to his own zeal. Origen had a wonderful father, [Leonides 00:46:14], who was martyred when he was a teenager. And so from being a teenager onwards, Origen wanted to follow his father and die like him. He says it’s no use to me to have a martyr father if I do not behave well and honour the nobility of my fathers by also being martyred as well. And so his mother, nervous about his impetuousness to volunteer for martyrdom as a teenager, hid his clothes, according to the story, so he couldn’t run out into the street naked. But again, of course, his passion gave him intractable enemies as well. Is it possible that the harsh desert of Egypt creates such extremities, as it was to do later with the Desert Fathers?

To support his own widowed mother, he started a school, which came to the favourable attention of the royal court and to many wealthy, educated Christians. By patronage from wealthy friends, he built up a uniquely rich library of ancient scrolls in the Hebrew and Greek, creating what he developed as his remarkable Hexapla. This was six columns of Biblical versions which you could compare by reading them both vertically and horizontally by placing the Septuagint centrally along with the other codices in other languages, including Aramaic and Samaritan, Hebrew and Greek variants. This shows his remarkable education and linguistic skills, but it was extremely costly, impossible for him ever to do without the financial support of a wealthy patron. And again, it’s a lady who provided this for him.

Underlying his Biblical interpretations was his belief in the central authority of the Greek Septuagint translation and, behind that, the voice of the Logos as the voice of Christ speaking in all the scriptures the things concerning himself. Christ communicates inseparably both doctrinally and ethically. We talk today about the inerrancy of scripture. Do we ever speak about the perfection that ethically we should have for such inerrancy? In other words, it’s so skewed is our misunderstanding of the authority of scripture. The Bible is holy to make us holy people. And so the essential Biblical teachings, as Origen summarises in the rule of faith, is in seven teachings. It teaches us the nature of God. It teaches us the nature of Christ as the Son of God. It teaches us the unity of the one Holy Spirit. It teaches the relations of soul and body. It teaches us about the devil and his angels. It teaches us about the world, though created, has become corruptible. And it teaches us the inspiration of the holy scriptures. All are involved in the drama of salvation. And for this study, a recent work that’s excellent is Peter Marten’s Origen and Scripture: The Contours of the Exegetical Life.

Where he was sorely tested was his use of allegory for describing so much of the spiritual teaching of the scriptures. And he saw that this was required, not for immature Christians, but a test of their growing maturity. Today, we would say there can be no language about God that isn’t metaphorical. We have to say today that everything about God is paradoxical. So this whole crookedness of inerrancy is a misunderstanding, a profound misunderstanding—what Origen was realising, but he was way ahead of his times. And as we are to learn, he was condemned as a heretic.

Manlio Simonetti, in his Biblical interpretation in the Early Church, sums it all cogently: Origen understands the study of scripture to be the study of the whole scripture. He too matured as a commentator, beginning with the Books of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, to see their progressive forms of exegesis. He planned to write commentaries on every book of the Bible. He also wrote an exegetical treatise on Biblical principles, powerfully defending the scriptures against the pagan Celsus, who argued that Christians simply cribbed Greek philosophy in its context to serve their own errors. His reading was not static. Dynamic, it was drawing the reader into an ever deepening knowledge of Christ in all the scriptures, as Jesus did with the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. He defended the historicity of the Old Testament against the disdain of the Gnostic heretics. He sensed that Celsus, who was his opponent, realised that he was not just another religionist to debate, but he was introducing a unique challenge he had never faced before. His enemy was far, far more aware of the skill of Celsus than many of the later Christian so-called defenders of the faith.

We conclude then that Origen is [incomparable 00:53:39] in the 2nd century or later centuries as a philologist, as a defender of the uniqueness of the scriptures and as a teacher who, more than teaching, nurtures his students to mature in Christ. One of the dark stains of Christian history is that for four following centuries, Origen was viewed as a heretic. Incredible!

So now for our group discussions. First of all, discuss what Ireneaus of Lyons means that being a Christian is pursuing a more genuinely enriched life of being more fully alive as a human being. I was very much moved by Bishop Newbigin, who, having been a missionary in India, slapped in anger one day a native servant. Of course, it was a no-no even in the colonial life in India to do such a thing by a bishop. He had a nervous breakdown. He came back a broken man. But at the end of his life, he wrote a book that profoundly moved me as a young Christian and that is towards a more genuine, human existence, that being more fully alive as a Christian being, as Ireneaus is describing, that’s the apologetic of what it is to be a Christian.

Secondly, supposing you find yourself arrested today in a house church in China? What help would you find in the study of such legal defences as those presented by apologists like [Justin 00:56:11] or Athenagoras? The Chinese politburo has to realise that in their attempt to cut out corruption who are the best Christians, who are the best citizens. They’re Christians. ‘Why shoot yourself in the foot in persecuting Christians?’ is the apologia as much today in China as it was in the 2nd century against Rome.

Thirdly, comprehensive as the doctrinal defences are made by Tertullian, why do they sound similar to traditional Calvinistic evangelical voices of the 20th century? Does such moralism and such dogmatism really help to defend the faith? It doesn’t. It’s one thing to say what has Rome got to do with Jerusalem. And the answer is an awful lot. We live in Rome as well as in Jerusalem and so there’s a moderation that we require in what we might call our political theology.

And then finally, what new horizons for maturing in the scriptures are you beginning to find as you begin to study on the scholarship of Origen? I was a Christian. I’m being a Christian. I’m yet to be fulfilled as a Christian. The process is onward. The identity hasn’t stopped. Think about these things.

Thank you.